As your children start to get a little older (maybe even around 5 or 6 years old), they want to be involved in more activities. Activities like gymnastics or being on a soccer team, or music lessons, plus church and family activities. It’s easy for a family to go from quiet to chaos. Here’s how to organize your family’s schedule to avoid chaos.
I would like to thank Flat Harmony for sponsoring this post and for providing me a complimentary Weekly Planner Whiteboard. All opinions here are my own. For your convenience, this post includes affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy here.
Depending on how active your family is, it’s easy for the family schedule to get out of hand quickly. Once your children start reaching the age when they can be involved in sports or learn music or even just play dates with their friends. A family schedule that was once easy and relaxed can quickly become overwhelmed and chaotic.
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3 Steps to Organize Your Family’s Schedule
Have One Master Family Schedule
As you children enter the tween and teen years, their schedules will start to get busy. Fast. To stay organized, keep one master family schedule or planner so everyone knows the daily plan.
As a mom, you need to know everyone’s activities and where everyone needs to go each day. To keep your sanity and avoid chaos, you will want to develop one master family schedule.
It’s important that your kids keep their own schedule, too. They need to keep track of homework assignments and due dates. They also need to track when they have practices and other appointments.
But, if everyone in the family is keeping their own schedule and not sharing their schedule with MOM, you will have chaos. You will frequently find active and busy kids need to be in the different places at the same time and you will be stressed.
As your kids start to have their own schedules and activities, ask them to add their activities to the master family schedule each week.
Review the Schedule Once a Week
To keep the schedule updated, have a family meeting once a week to review everyone’s activities and to update the family planner. Ask everyone to add their activities and appointments for the week to the master family plan.
Sometimes, you will have the same activities every week. Practice will always be the same days/times. But other times you will extra activities like games, tournaments, school field trips (don’t forget the sack lunch and signed forms).
If you have new appointments or activities come up during the week, each family member (who is old enough) should be responsible for updating the schedule.
Keep the Family Schedule in a Central Place
Once the family schedule is updated, it’s important you keep the schedule in a central location where everyone can see it and check it before they leave for work or school each morning.
I put our family schedule on the side of the refrigerator. The kitchen is a central place at home (everyone is going to come and eat right?).
When you have the schedule in a central place, it’s easy for everyone to check and keep updated. The more updated the schedule, the more organized your family will be.
Flat Harmony offers a great magnetic weekly whiteboard you can use as your family planner. I’ve tried other magnetic planners before, what I really like about this one is that it’s flexible and not stiff. It also has plenty of space for important reminders, appointments and even a dinner plan each day. The markers are also magnetic so they are easy to keep close by for updates.
Once a week, when you are ready to make your updates, just take your weekly magnetic white board down and wipe it clean with a towel and water and start over again.
Keeping your family organized will be easy. Start by keeping one family schedule. Take time once a week to write down everyone’s schedule, and once you have it up-to-date keep the schedule in a central place for everyone to check and update.
Your turn…
How do you keep your family organized on busy days?
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